How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to
destroy
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Sunday Independent/UK
31 December 2006
When they hanged him, he was America’s vanquished foe, likened to
Hitler and Stalin for the murderous evil of his ways. What is
forgotten is that once, for more than a decade, Saddam Hussein was
staunchly supported by the US.
Indeed, it was Washington that supplied him with many of the weapons
of mass destruction the dictator used against his foes – weapons that
one day would serve as a pretext for the US-led invasion that toppled
him.
The dealings between the US and Saddam’s Iraq over the quarter of a
century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and
strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end,
in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.
Saddam seized complete power in 1978. Two years later he attacked
Iran, in what he called an "Arab war against the Persians", to
overthrow the Islamic revolutionary regime.
Washington was under no illusions about the brutality of Saddam’s
regime. But as Tehran gained the upper hand in the fighting, he came
to be seen as the lesser of two evils – a vital bulwark against
domination by a radical, anti-Western Iran of the strategically vital
Gulf region, with its colossal oil reserves.
Quietly, the US delivered the technology, weapons and logistical
support to prevent Iraq’s defeat. Its policy was symbolised by the
cordial meeting in Baghdad in December 1983 between Saddam and a
certain Donald Rumsfeld, then President Reagan’s special envoy to the
Middle East. Two decades later, as Secretary of Defence, he would plan
the invasion that toppled Saddam.
American assistance often took the form of dual-use technology that
had legitimate civilian uses, but which Washington was well aware
could (and would) be used on the battlefield. US intelligence also
provided Iraqi commanders with crucial information on Iranian troop
movements.
American backing grew ever more explicit. In 1982, the administration
ignored objections in Congress and removed Iraq from its list of
countries supporting terrorism. By November 1983, the National
Security Council had issued a directive that the US should do
"whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent an Iranian
victory. Washington did nothing to deter Saddam’s use of chemical
weapons.
As the 1980s progressed, a clandestine network of companies developed
in the US and other countries to help the Iraqi war effort. The
conflict between Iraq and Iran ended in 1988, but Saddam continued his
Western-supported military build-up until the very moment he invaded
Kuwait in August 1990.
It would be the turning point. Until then, the US had dealt with
Saddam in the context of keeping Iran at bay. Thereafter, however, the
Iraqi dictator was the enemy in his own right. The irony, of course,
was that America’s previous support encouraged him to think he could
get away with annexing Kuwait.
Indeed, just a week earlier, on 25 July 1990, the American ambassador,
April Glaspie, had met Saddam. According to a transcript of the
meeting, she informed him that Washington had no opinion on Arab-Arab
conflicts, "like your border disagreement with Kuwait".
The US-led coalition drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in a 100-hour
ground war, but the first President Bush decided not to press on to
Baghdad, creating the stalemate that in one form or another continued
until 2003. In the meantime, however, the truth gradually emerged
about how the US (and Britain) helped to create the monster they had
now half-slain.
Events thereafter make familiar reading: Saddam’s moves against the
Kurds and the Shias, as the first President Bush encouraged them to
rise up but did nothing to support them; a dozen years of sanctions
that brought misery on ordinary Iraqis but not to the regime; and
Operation Desert Fox in 1998, as the US and Britain launched their
heaviest air attacks until the 2003 war itself.
All the while, Saddam remained in power. Almost from the moment he
came to office, the second President Bush had his eye on finishing his
father’s business.After a three-week ground war he was duly
overthrown. But in doing so, the US has achieved exactly what it
sought to prevent when it backed him in the 1980s.
It is a matter of debate whether Iraqis are now worse off than under
Saddam’s dictatorship. The chaos in their country, however, has
produced one undisputed winner: an unchecked Iran, more menacing today
than in Ayatollah Khomeini’s time.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress